


One Room, One Night

by zeldadestry



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, supernatural season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:15:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7053250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>However many different worlds there may be, all the ones he’s visited have nightmares in them, so, in that way, they’re all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Room, One Night

There were times, before. Sam asked so many times, during the months before he ran away to California, and the months before he escaped from the panic room and went off with Ruby. And Dean always said yes, to whatever he wanted, and his answer made no difference, Sam still left.

 

Dean’s dozing, he feels gross, kind of sick, and it’s so weird, completely different from purgatory, where dismemberment existed, but not fevers or runny noses. But he just needs some more sleep. A little more sleep and he’ll be fine.

 

He stirs when he hears a key in the lock but doesn’t bother to raise himself to sitting.

“I brought you a sports drink,” Sam says, from the doorway, holding up a big bottle of bright yellow liquid. 

It’s not even Gatorade or Powerade, it’s generic from the supermarket across the parking lot from the motel and Dean frowns, unreasonably affronted that Sam couldn’t be bothered to try harder. “Did you have to get me lemon-lime? It looks like-” 

“Piss, I know. If you don’t want it, don’t drink it,” Sam says, but he opens the bottle, so Dean won’t have to, and leaves it on the bedside table corner, cap resting beside it. 

Dean reaches out for it, gulps half of it down, wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand, and settles himself back into bed for more sleep. 

He wakes up to find the room dark, except for the light of Sam’s laptop screen. He watches Sam, wonders what it would be like to open the door of this room and find nothing left out there, the rest of the world vanished. If there was only this room and the two people in it- once, he would’ve thought that wasn’t a bad scenario for upstairs, at the end of it all. Now? It feels like every time he’s forced to leave the world he’s been living in, the one he’s gotten used to, it’s gone for good. He fought to return to this place that looks close enough to where he was before, yeah, but that also changed while he was missing from it. Maybe there is no home for either of them, maybe there never was. Shit, what does it matter, anyway? However many different worlds there may be, all the ones he’s visited have nightmares in them, so, in that way, they’re all the same.

 

Sam’s trying to work but he keeps finding his eyes drifting away from the words he’s reading and towards Dean’s sleeping body. This time, when he turns to him, Dean’s eyes are open, and Sam feels the same charge he always does when they stare at each other. This is part of what links them together, whether they admit it to each other, or themselves, or not, looking at each other, sharing these long moments of wanting and waiting. And Sam wonders what Dean would admit in return if Sam could just bring himself to say, “Every time I jerk off, I think about you. Even if I’m fucking someone else I imagine you’re there, in the room with us, right behind me.” Instead, he gets up and crosses the room to the ratty sofa and turns on the tv with the remote. The last person who stayed here left it on ESPN. “Kansas is on,” he tells Dean.

“Yeah?” Dean perks up immediately. He gets up from the bed and sits down on the other end of the couch, as far away from Sam as he can get. “Few minutes left in the first,” Dean says. “We should get pizza, beer, during halftime.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, knowing he’s just been volunteered for the job, because Dean will want to stay here and watch the recap of the first half before the second begins. “I guess you’re feeling better, huh?” 

Dean shrugs. “Nap always helps, yeah.” 

“And what about those hand-delivered electrolytes?” 

Dean snorts. “You better hope I don’t pee in a bottle and give it to you the next time you feel shitty.”

 

Half an hour later, when Sam returns with the food and their six pack, he sits down on the middle cushion, closer to Dean than before, and puts everything on the table in front of them. Dean keeps up a running commentary, even as he eats. “Seriously? He’s open in the corner! Pass the fuckin ball! Don’t go to the hoop, you’re double teamed!”

Sam smiles to himself. “Don’t you usually complain that they rely too much on the three in college ball and they should drive the lane more?”

“So?”

“And now you’re telling him to pass for the three.”

“Dude.” Dean snaps his fingers in Sam’s face. “Think. A bad shot is a bad shot, ok? Chucking up a three when your defender’s got both hands in your face and you can’t get a good look? Not a good option. But ignoring a guy who’s wide open and shoots like, forty five percent from three, and instead getting rejected at the rim by an elite shot blocker? Not cool, either.” 

 

Sam loses interest in the game after they eat. He wants to enjoy it, he wishes he could, but how can he care about the outcome when he knows that, whatever it is, all the humans involved remain pawns or kibble or cannon fodder. It matters so much to the players and the coaches and the crowds, but none of it would, probably, not if they knew that their lives aren’t really theirs, that demons and angels can step in and fuck with them at any time, kill them and bring them back to life like it’s nothing. 

Dean stays fixed on the game, but Sam ends up just staring into space, quiet, even a little bit happy, because eventually Dean shifts closer, and he’s aware of the heat of their thighs resting together. Dean must still be really fucking tired, because he falls asleep again with five minutes left to play, even though the teams are trading the lead back and forth, and it’s not until the final buzzer that his eyes crack open again at the shrill sound. “Did they win?” he mumbles, rubbing at the wet corner of his mouth.

“They won,” Sam knocks his knee against Dean’s. He taps at the damp spot on Dean’s t-shirt, just below his collar, and smirks. “You drooled on yourself.” 

Dean slaps his hand away and turns his attention back to the tv to focus on the highlights that are now showing on the screen.

Sam gets up and returns to his laptop and the research he left on it. When he spares a glance at Dean, twenty minutes or so later, he’s asleep again. Sam stands, crosses the room, and gently presses his heel down on the top of Dean’s foot, using only as much pressure as it takes to get Dean to stir. “Hey,” Sam says, once he’s awake again. “You should get in bed, Dean, you know your back feels better when you do.” He wonders if there’s anywhere he can touch Dean, anywhere Dean will let him rest a hand but Dean’s eyes give him no clues. He’s shit at reading Dean these days, or Dean’s better at hiding, he doesn’t know, it’s probably both. It’s probably both and that leaves him, more often than not, aware that he’s doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing. Let’s just not talk anymore, then, he imagines Dean saying. What had Dean said, about Amelia, about letting Sam go? “I’m tired of fighting.” Fuck. Right. Isn’t that the same as saying “I give up”? Same shit he pulled after Bobby died, though Sam knows Dean doesn’t see it that way, when he didn’t think about anything other than revenge against Dick Roman. Pretend Lucifer knew how to twist that one in deep: “This is, wow, this is really sad to witness, Sam. You’re losing your fucking mind but he just keeps ignoring all the signs. He’s your life vest, he’s the only chance you’ve got- and you know what makes it so bad? I think he knows that, deep down, but he’s still so ready to throw himself away, get himself wasted, soon as he can, and leave you all alone, kiddo.” He reaches out a hand, pats Dean’s cheek. “Seriously, dude, go to bed.” Dean glares up at him and Sam reluctantly draws his hand away. “Sorry,” he says, though he’s not even sure why.

“You should be,” Dean mutters. 

 

Dean wakes up around dawn, his shoulders tight, just like Sam warned him. Sam’s awake, too, lying on his back, his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Dean gets up off the couch and heads to Sam’s bed, slides under the covers with him. 

“What are you doing?” Sam says. He sounds surprised, but he doesn’t shift away. 

“You’re not the only one who can start this,” Dean says, and he wonders whether or not Sam will realize it’s a question more than a statement. 

Sam kisses him hard, biting at his lips, then rolls Dean over until he’s pinned beneath him. “Did you?” he asks, squeezing his hand around Dean’s throat. “With Benny?”

Did I what with Benny? Dean thinks, staring up at Sam and when it clicks it still doesn’t make much sense. Benny was his friend- or were they using each other because there was no one else? Both. But that didn’t mean Dean had ever wanted him. “No.”

Sam lets go but he still looks angry. “This won’t fix everything. You get that, right?”

Dean doesn’t answer with words, but he lets his thighs fall open so Sam can fit between them. It may not change anything, it never has before, but that’s ok because while it’s happening it’s still the only thing that matters at all.


End file.
